It has been known that in order to perform the harvesting of olives and of other similar products having small dimensions harvesting apparatuses are used, commonly called beaters, suitable to act on the branches of fruit trees, shaking them, in order to provoke the detachment and then the falling down of the fruits.
Such beaters generally provide a support rod, preferably of the telescopic type, suitable to be carried by an agricultural machine, or manually by an operator at a suitable end handle. At the free end the rod carries a series of shaker elements, suitably shaped for being inserted between the branches, and suitable to be actuated in rotation or in a swinging motion by means of drives of the pneumatic or electric type.
In particular, nowadays are known beater devices comprising comb shaped shaker elements, usually arranged in couple on the support at the end of the support rod. Such elements are suitable to be driven oscillating between a closed configuration, having the combs arranged facing on parallel planes, and an opened configuration, with diverging combs.
For example patent application EP1795064 A1 discloses an apparatus for harvesting olives comprising a couple of combs designed to engage with the fruits to be harvested, a support rod for the combs which extends from one end of a central structure, a grip portion made on the aforesaid central structure, a motor member suitable to move the combs and means for transmitting motion form the motor member to the combs.
Patent application no. EP2091317 A1 illustrates a shaker device comprising a body arranged at the top of a support rod and carrying a shaker member suitable to be actuated through the interposition of transmission means by actuation means according to a conical pendular motion. The transmission means comprises a lever carried radially by the driving shaft and a support pin connected at one end to the aforesaid lever and at the opposite end to the shaker member. Spherical connection means are provided between the cited connection pin and the box for containing the body of the beater device.
The known beaters have made the olive harvesting operations quicker and easier, nevertheless they still present considerable drawbacks.
First of all such devices have rather complex structures, difficult to assemble and laborious to disassemble in case of maintenance.
Moreover the known devices present considerable bulk volume and weight, sometimes not perfectly equilibrated. For this reason the insertion of the shaker members among the branches of the trees can turn out problematic and hard for the operator. Furthermore such devices of known type can produce an inhomogeneous “combing” motion inside the foliage of the tree, increasing the risk of damaging the plants. In fact if the shaker elements do not act in a homogeneous way on the foliage of the tree, the harvesting effect can result excessively concentrated in some parts, until scratching the branches, while viceversa it can result ineffective in other zones, with insufficient results for the harvest. In particular scratching the branches can turn out to be a very harmful action when it involves the germinable part of the plant, since it can compromise the production of fruits for the following year. Such a risk is increased by the arising of undesired vibrations which can occur following the actuation of the beating elements, when these latter are not perfectly equilibrated.